Insanity Is In the Eyes of the Beholder
by mng042197
Summary: Through the years, wrong and right seemed to blur together. Violet couldn't see the difference anymore. Then, the new family came, and the darkness grew stronger. Only, this time, it was Violet who seemed to have lost her grip on her sanity.
1. Blank

Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.

So many years had passed since that night that Violet had lost count. When she'd sent Tate away, she had still felt alive. She had still felt meaning and motivation and all of the emotions that she had always felt. And even afterwards, for a little while, she had felt normal. Vivien and Ben were happy, and so was the baby, and, likewise, Violet pretended to be happy. In reality, however, she was in hell. It wasn't that she missed him; she would try to convince herself of that. Rather, she was simply lonely. There hadn't been any residents in the house in almost five years, and the days were blurring together, just as Moira had said that they would. She couldn't listen to new music, couldn't watch someone her own age having a life as she often liked to do. There was nothing, and sometimes she wondered if she wouldn't have been better off not knowing about everything that had happened, everything that Tate had done. She wondered if they couldn't have just all been happy there, if she could have had love n death and never been the wiser. It seemed preferable, but then she remembered that she would have not had real love, or real romance. It was all a lie, and this always brought her back to the same place in which she had started—hating the boy who, in spite of herself, she couldn't help but love more than anything in the world.

Violet sat in her room, where she spent most of her time, smoking a cigarette that she really didn't need any more and letting the blood from the cut in her wrist seep out onto her bed. It was deep, deeper than she ever would have made it when she was alive, but bleeding out gave her an escape, as sick as it sounded. Just as Hayden wasted hours stabbing Hugo over and over again, Violet would sit in that bed and die, over and over again until she finally got too tired to even reach over to grab the razor blade from her nightstand. Vivien had noticed, but she never said anything. It wasn't something she could control anymore. In body, her daughter was still just fifteen. In reality, however, she would be thirty-one the following month; this, she knew, even if Violet didn't, even if she had given up counting after her twenty-first birthday. The last one had depressed her so much…she hadn't spoken for weeks. It was the last big milestone in her life, and she realized then that it didn't really count. She would always be fifteen, forever.

Violet heard someone knocking on her door, heard a car pulling up in the driveway, but she didn't bother to move. She knew who it was—Vivien, of course. She was the only person who dared to enter, as Ben had long ago given up, insisting that only time would heal Violet. He was a shrink, but he'd never been a very good one, and she wouldn't talk to him regardless, not about the things that really bothered her. Because he didn't understand. He never would.

The door fell open eventually, and her mother walked through, looking just as beautiful as always. She couldn't help but be a little jealous, couldn't help but wonder what Tate really thought of her mother. Violet had never been very good looking, not by her standards anyway. She wasn't like Vivien. She wasn't very feminine, wasn't curvy or sexual in any way. For eternity, she was just a girl, never a woman. Had Tate enjoyed the awful thing that he had done? He must have, Violet decided. She would believe this always, no matter what anyone to her to the contrary. This one thing would always ring true in her mind, in her heart: Tate had been with Vivien, and that was the ultimate betrayal, no matter what his reasons behind it were.

"They're showing the house." her mother said, placing a hand on Violet's head. She tried very hard to ignore the slash in her wrist, tried very hard not to pay it any mind. The effort not to panic was deliberate, but it was futile. Regardless of how many times she saw her child this way, it would always frighten her half to death. But she was already dead, wasn't she? So that wasn't quite right. In truth, it was almost like dying all over again, though even that had been easier.

"Are they? I hadn't noticed." Violet's voice was monotone as she forced out the words, still staring up at the ceiling as she took a long drag off of her cigarette.

"I wish you wouldn't do that." The words were in vain, but she said them out of habit.

"I'm too old, mom. And I'm already dead, so what's the point in suffering? More than I have to, anyway." This was one of those days, one of those days when Violet didn't seem to care who she hurt, who knew that she was miserable. As long as Tate didn't see, as long as he didn't know how much he had hurt her, she could deal with all of the collateral damage later.

"Why don't you come and watch? I think they have kids, about your age." The smile she flashed was short-lived.

Violet diverted her eyes to her mother's face for just a moment, an expression of bitter disbelief securely in place on her eternally-young countenance. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" It was worse than Vivien had expected. She had made her angry, and the fury wouldn't subside for a while, she knew. That was dangerous, especially when the houses darkness seemed to hang in the air around the young girl. She was so susceptible to it, attracted to it, in fact. She thrived within those shadows, and those times when she embraced it Vivien worried that she would be taken by it, like so many of the others. She was afraid that she would want to inflict that same pain on others, make them suffer with her. It was a natural thing, but it was too high a price to pay for company in their purgatory. Violet continued to rant, sitting up, her voice rising until she was screaming viciously, her voice becoming gravely. "Am I supposed to do to someone else like he did to me? Am I supposed to fall in love with some poor kid who doesn't know any better? Pull him into the darkness with me? I'm dead. Who cares where I am? But there's no point in trying to be alive. Why are you even here? You have dad, and Jeremy. You don't need to be here with me."

The words stung more than Vivien had expected, considering she had heard them a million times before. It had gotten worse in the past few years, but she had been so convinced that she would be able to temper it. Sometimes, she wondered if Tate hadn't been right in thinking that bringing someone to the house for Violet would be the only way to save her. He'd been willing to do the job, been willing to slit that young boy's throat in order to make her happy, in order to give her some semblance of a future. And Vivien often thought that maybe he was right, but the idea of damning someone like she had been damned seemed too awful, too unforgivable. Also, she doubted that her daughter would ever be able to truly forget the boy who had destroyed their family, and then what would happen to that poor soul, if the two teenagers ever reconciled. He too would be alone, just like Violet and Tate were right then—broken hearted and useless.

"Come with me, Violet. You know how nervous I get when new people show up. I don't like it, and it's getting harder to chase them away. Everybody knows the stories about this place, and the people who come to look at it are usually after the kicks. They expect us now."

Violet looked at the woman begrudgingly as she watched the last remnants of the slice on her wrist close, as though it had never been there. The blood too dried up, evaporated into thin air. She wasn't real, and neither was her blood—the crimson that she bled for all of the mistakes that she had made both in life and in death. Unwilling, she got to her feet and led the way downstairs, careful to keep herself hidden from the living. They were already in the front hall.

The family was not what they usually saw coming through this place. They were nice looking, normal enough, and it made both women's hearts constrict. They seemed so happy, too happy to be in this deplorable place. There was a man and wife, just the same age as Vivien and Ben had been when they first walked up the front stairs of the Murder House, both with light coloring, bright blue eyes which they had passed on to their daughter who stood beside them. She was short, petite, but voluptuous for a girl her age. She looked older, though it was easy to see in her face that she couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. Her hair was long and blonde, lighter than Violet's, and her features were delicate. In a way, she was an embodiment of everything that Violet had always hated in her life; she was beautiful, happy, all smiles. The girl was light and airy—something that Violet Harmon had never been close to being in her entire existence.

"It's beautiful." The woman cooed, spinning in a circle, taking in all of the tiffany fixtures and the ornate wood work. "But what about the kitchen? That's what I want to see. Come on, Bethany. Hurry up."

The mother seemed just as young as her daughter, just as exuberant, as she rushed through the house that had once been the Harmon's home, and the home of so many others. Now, it was their prison. The husband stayed in the hallway, talking to the real-estate agent. He seemed serious, business-like. Vivien was reminded of her father, the way he had always been when she was a child. He'd been a lawyer, and had always had that certain way of speaking that made her envy his composed way of speaking, the way he always seemed to make people respect him without being the least bit intimidating. The thought made her smile, eliciting an eye-roll from Violet who not stood a few stairs below her.

"What, did you fall in love or something?" she question, making her mother's face fall.

"No. He just reminds me of someone." It was enough to make Violet want to run out the door, off the property, again and again, as many times as she need to, just so that she could show up at the back door and do it all over again. She recalled the first time she had ever done this, and it only made the fury build inside of her. Sometimes, it was a lovely past time, and it always made her tired enough to fade out for a while afterwards. Yet, because that was just her luck, it always, without fail, made her think of him. It made her remember how he had held her, how he had told her he loved her, told her everything would be alright. He'd promised that it would be him and her, forever. All lies.

"Too bad he'll probably either run off soon or die…or maybe he'll snap and kill them all. Then he can go to prison. That happens too, doesn't it? I'll have to ask Hayden. She's been keeping a tally." Though, in truth, not many people had died in the house since the Harmons. They'd had some success in protecting whoever came through, but there were always those few failures. One of them had resulted in the lingering ghost of a thirty-five-year-old insurance salesman and a couple of junkies that had snuck into the basement on the wrong night. Thaddeus had had his way with them. Last of all, there was Christopher, who Hayden had brought home from a club one Halloween. She always brought somebody back with her, and, usually, they got to go home. But Chris bore a strong resemblance to Ben, and she just hadn't been able to stop herself. She argued that death did that to a person, but few of the others agreed. Not even Tate had been able to justify it. He'd been a monster before he was killed, and so it was only natural for him to continue to be one afterwards. Therefore, to him, it seemed that Hayden must have always had that killer instinct, somewhere under all of the bravado and eyeliner, the girlish demeanor. She was a monster too.

The thing that surprised Violet was that Tate hadn't killed a soul in the time since she had sent him away—at least, not that she had heard of. He'd come very close to killing that boy the night that Violet had told him goodbye, and he'd thought seriously about gutting the people who came to take away Violet's body, once it had been discovered. But he hadn't and, to him, that seemed like huge progress. Even Ben said it was.

He watched the family drive away from the attic window, remembering when it had been Violet and her parents who had been in that car—the new family coming to see the Murder House. He remembered what she had been wearing, how she had come looking for her mother's dog and had ended up in the basement. She hadn't been afraid, he didn't think, but he hadn't been sure at the time, not until she had asked what had happened to the last homeowners. When she heard the story, he remembered that she had smirked in a way that surprised even him, told the real-estate agent that they would take it. She had found it fascinating, even then, when she hadn't known the truth about the place, about the dark secrets that it concealed behind its walls. She had been brave, been strong, and Tate had admired it, envied it.

He could hear her voice moving through the halls, telling Vivien to leave her alone. Years ago, he had taken to watching her from a distance, from places where she wouldn't be able to see him. He liked to listen to her too, in spite of all the pain and havoc it wreaked for him to hear her voice, feel her presence, and not be able to touch her or even speak to her. The last time she had kissed him, when she'd vanished from under his hands, he was sure that his heart would never heal. He would never be callous again, because, when he looked at his hands, instead of seeing weapons, blood and carnage, all he saw was Violet—the way that his hands looked and felt when they slid over her skin, the way she had once smiled at him when his hand would come to cup her face. He wanted to see that, to feel it again someday, but he never would if he tainted the thoughts with blood. He would never have her if he let the demons control him.

Violet was locked in her room again, and Tate began to worry, like he always did. He could see her changing, and it terrified him. She was not soft like she had once been, was not as kind as he had known her to be. She was darker now, as though the darkness that had always been marked in a small corner of her soul was expanding, just as his own had. He had once been good too, he thought, but something had changed. It had been pain and suffering and anger and resentment that had changed him, that had allowed those despicable monsters to grow and flourish in his heart. It was the unjust nature of the life that he saw around himself that had made him incapable of feeling pity or regret. But that had all come flooding back to him when she had sent him away. He felt nothing but regret, nothing but sorrow and pity for what he had done to her and to the others in the house.

As for the kids he had killed at Westfield, he realized that it had not been a mercy killing, not as he had intended for it to be. For so long, he hadn't even been able to remember what he had done. He had thought, been convinced, that it was all a dream. But it had been real, and he could see that now. He could accept it. The thought tortured him. Worst of all, Violet knew the truth, knew every gory detail. She had all along, but it was not until she had discovered what he had done to Vivien that she had refused to be with him. She had told him that she still loved him, but that wasn't enough. Would it ever be enough?

He wondered as he stood in the shadows, peaking out through the closet door and watching Violet light another cigarette. She'd started to cut herself again. She'd broken her promise to him, yet he knew he had no right to be angry at this. He had broken promises too, more than he could count, and so it seemed fair, righteous even, that she should break her one and only promise to him.

With the touch of a button, music played through the house, the sounds of Violet's alternative bands filling his ears. She sang along as she inhaled the smoke, then exhaled it, causing it to waft from her nose. She always look like a dragon when she did this, so fierce and unbreakable But Tate had seen her broken. The way she was now was not her; it was something else, something that he was growing to despise. He missed the old Violet, the Violet that had always had so much spirit, who had loved him, loved her parents. He missed the Violet that he had tried to save, the Violet that had told him to go away. Even then, she had been different.

It would be her last night in that room. The people who had come to see the house had decided to make an offer, and there was no competition. This room would be, just as Violet had wanted, someone else's room. And she could watch them do all of the things that she would never get to do. Then, as she lay on the bed, a thought slipped into her mind. What if her mother was right? What if she did need the interaction with the living? She didn't like the girl who had come to see the house very much at all, but beggars can't be choosers. And, perhaps, it would be fun. Perhaps, the girl would be afraid of her. This notion played to the more vindictive side of Violet's personality, the darkest parts that made her want to elicit fear from others. It was the only part of death that suited her, yet she always suppressed it. But it was decided now, and the thought was growing like wild fire through her mind. She could learn to enjoy playing with the living, just as she had with that first boy. She recalled how he had looked at her oddly as she shuffled through her room, how she had been able to smell his fear as she told him that she was a ghost of her former self. He never would have been interested in her, but Tate couldn't see that. He loved her, and so he assumed that others would too.

But he was different, Violet would always note. His quirks were what had made him right for her in so many ways. He could accept her oddities because he had so many of his own, some of them much like hers. Violet hated to admit it, but she was more like Tate than she had originally thought. Years of solitude, of being nothing but a corpse, had brought that side of her to the surface and, while she didn't like it, she didn't really care to fight it.

Finally, she understood what made him so insane, so crazed, not that it mattered. Of course, it would never make a difference.


	2. Changed

Author's Note: So…I feel like I update way too much…haha. Everyone waits so long…but I feel guilty when I don't update. It's hard to update that much with school and stuff, so I'm sorry if it takes me a little longer to update. The more reviews I get, the faster I write! Love you all and I hope you enjoy the story!

Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.

Violet watched as the girl moved all of her things into what had once been her bedroom, and Tate's bedroom before that. She thought of how she had taken the pills that had killed her right where the girl stood beside the bed, how Tate had been shot dead there. The images were too much, superimposed of her own vision of that innocent young girl before her. In her mind, Violet was no longer a child; she'd been a child for far too long now. She was an adult, but she couldn't shake the sense of both comradery and rivalry as she looked at her pretty new housemate. It made Violet seethe, to see how alive she was, how happy and fulfilled. The pictures of her friends and family and places she had visited that were now hung on the walls only made the ghost girl increasingly bitter. She certainly did get around, from the looks of it. This girl was loved, adored, cherished, accepted. She lived. And, though Violet had never been the jealous type, she couldn't help the twisting in her gut at the realization that she had not been missed in the same that this girl would were harm to befall her. Nobody had noticed the absence of the Harmon daughter, not for sixteen days. It made her shudder.

She drifted closer to the girl, standing right beside her, watching as she folded her brightly colored clothes, all perfectly pressed and packed away. The way the bracelets on her wrists clanged together reminded Violet that she had never worn anything but long sleeves when she was alive, to cover her scars. To a certain point, it had contributed to her paleness, her general unwell appearance. She didn't like the sun, didn't like the summer, because it had been a catalyst in revealing all of her deepest secrets, her biggest insecurities about both her body and her soul. She had held back so much, worried about so much, and it was all too painful to recall.

"Mom?" the girl called over her shoulder, inadvertently shouting in Violet's ear. She might have shouted at her, had she not been too absorbed in watching life unfold before her. She missed this, the mundane part of living that she had never fully appreciated. "Mom, where are all my cd's?"

Music. It made Violet smile hopefully, until the woman came through the door carrying a small box of tapes, consisting mostly of happy pop remixes and main streamed hits. These were albums that Vivien had used to buy Violet whenever she caved to the misconception that she could be hip. It was never impressive, only depressing and full of false thanks.

"Are you almost done, Bethany? I'm not leaving this house until I know you've started your homework. So finish up, okay?"

Bethany. She didn't like the name much, but then she didn't like the person who it belonged to much either. She wasn't at all her style, and she doubted very much that they would get along well at all. But there were other options for entertainment—a different sort of bond—and Violet intended to test her theories just as soon as Mr. and Mrs. Pike walked out the door. From what she could tell, they were going on for a date night and wouldn't be back until late. She would have plenty of time. But watching them interact made her think of her parents, the way they had been before everything had fallen apart, before the miscarriage and the infidelity and the Murder House, the way they were now. They were happy. They had been happy. So were these people.

When the house was empty, Violet made her move. The bedroom—her bedroom—was empty, but she could wait. Seated on the bed, Violet anticipated Bethany Pike's entrance, wondering how the girl would react to her. She wasn't sure what she would say, but that was the beauty of Violet's mind, in the form that it now existed, twisted into something that she had always been attracted to but never truly had the courage to embrace within herself. Now, she felt a bit like Tate, or even Hayden, stretched out across the pink comforted of the bed, hands folded behind her head, a cheeky smile plastered on her face. She hoped to scare the girl, and she would get her wish.

"Who are you? What are you doing in my room?" Those were the first words spoken, and Violet smirked devilishly. This was what she had wanted, what she had needed and craved all along. She was affecting something, for once, and it felt amazing.

With smugness thick in her tone, she got to her feet and began to circle her prey. "Actually, this was my room. I don't think it's any more yours than it is mine, or any more mine than it was his before I lived here." She didn't dare to say his name out loud. "As to who I am, I guess you could say I'm a ghost of my former self." She repeated the words, shrinking away from their meaning, trying to ignore the irony there. "The real question here is, who are you?"

"Beth." she forced out quickly, her body stiff as a board. Violet saw this and it made her smile widen.

"Oh, really? I thought it was Bethany. But I guess we all have our own way of rebelling…I used to smoke cigarettes, chain smoke them really. Don't get me wrong; I still do, but it doesn't seem to matter so much anymore. It's not like they're going to kill me." She laughed at this, her face coming to rest just a few inches from that of the girl who she had so tactfully chosen to harass. "Do you do anything else bad? Drugs? Alcohol? Skipping school? Any boys you like that your parents don't approve of? I had one. Damn, do I regret it too. I'll never get away from him, though, and neither will they."

"What are you talking about? Why are you here?"

Violet ignore her panicked questions, staring her directly in the eyes as she lit another cigarette, growing more and more wild in the eyes as she spoke. "Do you believe in ghosts, Beth Pike?" And she blew the smoke in her face, right at her beautiful, blue eyes. "Well, do you?"

The words hung in the air as each girl appraised one another, one dead, one alive. The dead one seemed fearless, almost scoffing at the notion of fear. Because, truly, what was there to be afraid of? Nothing. She had seen it all. The living one, on the other hand, was terrified. She had so much to lose. She didn't even realize all that was at stake. And it was that truth that kept Violet from fading out right there, that pushed her to thrill to the sound of the girl's heavy, quick breaths. She was thriving on the fear, and she didn't want to let it go. She wouldn't. It a new sort of bloodletting, a new vice that she found more solace in than anything.

"What are you doing, Violet?" sounded a voice from behind her. She hadn't realized that Bethany was staring past her until it was too late. Because it was not the voice of her mother, or even her father or Moira. It was his voice, and the sound burned through her ears like acid.

"I thought I told you to go away, Tate. I told you to stay out of my life…existence, whatever it is. So do what I said. Don't break any more promises." There was threat there and, any other day, under any other circumstances, he might have withdrawn willingly. But not then, because there was more to this than just his pain and her pain, their separation and all of the sin and sick deeds that had come between them.

"You don't want to do this, Vi. You think you do, but it isn't you. This is exactly the kind of thing that you would stop me from doing. But you're not me, remember? You're supposed to be the good one." The words hurt more than she had thought that they would. Was he honestly going to stand there and judge her? Though concern was clear in his voice, she heard nothing but a reprimanding, like a guilty child. "Violet, you need to stop, before this goes too far." But who was he to say what too far was?

She returned her attention to the girl before her. "Do you ever think about death, Beth? Have you thought about what happens after you die? Have you wondered what it's like to die? I could tell you. Better yet, I could show you." And, with that, Violet raised the razor blade that she had been clutching in her hand, brought it up between them so that it was right between each pair of eyes—one innocent blue, the other a tainted brown. Slowly, deliberately, she dragged the sharp edge of the razor across the skin, opening up a large, narrow wound and watching with fascination as the blood ran to the floor. It was sick, but she was actually enjoying this. The terror on her victim's eyes made it worth the pain.

Tate lurched forward, catching Violet in his arms and retrieving the crude weapon from her boney hands. She was so small, so weak, yet so bold. He might have stopped to marvel at this trait, but the sight of her bleeding from the self-inflicted injury filled him with rage. She hadn't killed the girl, as he had thought she might. She had killed herself all over again, as she did quite frequently. Only, this time, she'd had an audience, and that was what made all the difference. It was the young girl's fault, but how could she have known?

"Where's the phone?" Bethany mouthed the words to herself, glancing around, but Tate caught her arm with one bloody hand, the other still supporting Violet's limp form. She was easy to support, fit so perfectly in his arms, and he couldn't stop the sob that choked his throat.

"She's already dead! Don't you understand?" he shouted in her face, just as terrifying as always. In many ways, they were so much alike, yet so different. In the moment, Beth couldn't tell the difference between the homicidal and suicidal. "It won't matter, and they'll just think you're crazy, so don't call the cops." He awarded her no explanation further than that. It was all she deserved—a stupid girl, a girl who was everything he had always found wrong with society, everything that he had ever tried not to be, tried to erase. Violet was her polar opposite, and that was what made him love her so much: her unconventional ways. She was like a puzzle that even he couldn't figure out, couldn't piece together. Sometimes, though—like right then—he wished he didn't need to, wished she would stop being complicated in ways that would only hurt her.

Broken hearted at being able to touch her for the first time in so long, he dragged her out into the hall, towards the bathroom just as he had the day that she had died. There had been less blood then, and he'd been more panicked because there was still a life to be saved. Now, he felt no urgency, only torturous mourning for the girl that he loved. As he pulled her into the bathtub and turned on the water, he thought, of all the terrible things she would say to him when came to again and of all the reasons that he wouldn't raise a finger to stop her from walking away from him again. He deserved this, he knew. But how could she not miss him? How could she not think about him every day, the same way he thought about her? How could she not forgive him? That wasn't love, he didn't think. He loved her no matter what she did, who she became, but she would never love him again. It made him wonder if she had lied before, when she had confessed her feelings for him. He pondered the idea that she had never been in love with him at all, rather that she had used him in the moment, simply because he was there and he cared for her. This shattered his blackened soul, for the thousandth time since she'd said goodbye.

It was never apparent to him why she did certain things. For instance, he didn't understand why she had slit her own throat instead of that of the young girl's. It would have been his first instinct, yet he wasn't quite right in that way, was he? His reactions were always wrong, he knew this. But, Tate did feel a sense of right as he watched her there, waited for her to heal. Perhaps it was a step in correct direction, towards convincing her to put her faith in him again. He could be strong for her. He was certain of it. He could do anything for her, be anything she asked him to be. It was one of the best things about his sickness, the twisted monster inside of himself that he could never seem to be rid of. It could take many forms, morph into whatever served his purposes best and Tate was sure that it could be something good, if that was what could make him happy. If leaving the anger and the vicious demons behind was what he needed to do in order to find peace, in order to satisfy all of the urges that he now harbored within his body, then it should be easy. Tate was positive of this fact, put his trust in the theory.

But, while clarity found him, Violet was lost in questions mixed with confusion and the pain and silence of her temporary death. It was like sleeping—very much like sleeping, yet it was usually so much more peaceful than this, like a short break from her awful reality. Slowly, she was beginning to come back to the body that she inhabited, just a spiritual body but a body nonetheless. She was an entity again and she could feel the slight tingling in her throat where she knew the self-inflicted wound would be healing. Then, her memory returned, and she began to wonder just how badly she had frightened Bethany Pike. She wondered why Tate had wanted to stop her, why he had shown up at all. Did he watch her? Valid questions, all, but there would be plenty of time for that. As her eyes fluttered open, she replaced her queries with the underlying anger that she felt. Tate had stopped her, told her that what she was doing was wrong. But who was he to judge?

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Violet asked, staring straight ahead of her, the water still beating down on her small, cold form, whatever it was. The venom in her tone made him shy away, made him flinch. He had expected it, but it hurt all the same. Tate had never been afraid of anything, not ever, not dying or the consequences of his decisions. He'd never had any fear in him at all, any conscience, until he'd met Violet. Now, fear was the only emotion that he could seem to find within himself.

"I was stopping you." It was a simple answer, and it was the truth, but it would not appease her. She stood up, dripping wet, and came to stand before him, one eyebrow cocked in disbelief. Her jaw was clenched, and the way her lips curled around the words would have made his blood run cold if he hadn't already been chilled with death.

"Why would you stop me? Because you get to be all self-righteous now? You decided you want to play for the other team now? I bet you thought I was gonna kill her. I'm not you, Tate." She wasn't, not yet, but she moved closer with ever cold word, every flipped action. He could see the wheels turning, her morals changing. She wouldn't be any form of Violet for very long. She was letting it all in, and it was altering her. Violet was just as beautiful to him as she had always been, but it hurt him to see the way she saw things, after all that had happened.

"I didn't want you to do something that you'll regret. You don't want to hurt people, Vi. I know you."

She scoffed, poking one of her long, slender fingers into his chest. "You don't know a thing about me, and don't try to tell me what I will and will not regret. I don't need you, Tate Langdon. Understand that? I never needed you. I'll do what I want. Don't question me." Her eyes flashed to down at his bloody clothes and hands, reminding her of what she had done, what a crazy idea it had been. She couldn't help the horror that flooded through her at the memory, but she swallowed it, kept her revulsion from showing on her face. She refused to let him win, even if he'd never known that there was a battle to be fought there.

Tate only wanted to help, in whatever misguided way he saw fit. "This isn't you, Violet. You don't do bad things like I do…like I did." He didn't do those things anymore, he told himself as though to reinforce his resolve. He was good, just as good as her. It was not him that was evil; it was the monsters that fought to control him. But he had decided to be strong. He wouldn't listen to the voices, to the dark desires that sometimes crept into his mind in the most unexpected moments.

"It's not like I raped the woman…not like you did. I only had a little fun." It had been fun, to watch the way terror filled her eyes. It wasn't until Tate had shown up that she had been forced to return to reality, to remember all of the reasons why she was able to do what she was doing. She had been shoved back to the past, to all of the most painful places in her mind, devoid of all light, to those places that had once been filled with love and affection and passion. Now, she found them empty. That was why she had cut her throat. She had never planned to cut herself, but it had felt right in the moment, just as soon as her hand found the razor that she kept in the pocket of her sweater. It was a way of crying for help, somehow, not that Violet would ever admit that.

"Rape isn't the only way to hurt someone. Stop pretending like it's all that matters, just because it touched you personally. And that's some fun you're having. I'm sick of watching you bleed out. It makes me sick—and I'm dead. That's not easy to do, Violet. How long are you going to punish me for?" By this time, his voice had steadily climbed to a higher volume, a greater strength. He was frustrated, because he would never be able to understand. The years went by, and Violet was never happy. She was miserable. Why would she subject herself to that, if the solution was right there beside her, entirely willing? He could make the pain go away, but she wouldn't let him, refused to forget. He could be everything to her, as he once had been, yet she pushed him farther away.

"Who are you?" The question only made the tears in Tate's eyes spill over the brims. He had cried so much in Violet's presence. She thought she should be immune to his sobs by this time, but she wasn't. They tortured her, crushed her every single time. "Please, stop crying, Tate." Despite the plea, her voice was cold, distant. There was no hope of comforting him in that way.

"I'm trying to be what you want, Violet."

He had been everything that she wanted and more. He still was. But she couldn't look at him without remembering, without seeing all of the deplorable things that he'd had a hand in. She couldn't let it go, and there was nothing she could do to change that.

"I'm sorry, Tate." Violet told him, shaking her head and grazing her hand over his shoulder as she walked away, feeling more empty than she had in a very long time.


	3. Confrontation

Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.

The sound resonated through the house, echoing, as the girl called out for someone who she was terrified to see again. Beth hadn't been as afraid of Violet as she had hoped, and now she sought her out. It was a sort of morbid curiosity that drove her to do this, a nagging voice in the back of her mind telling her that she needed to know—needed to see if the ghost girl and boy were really there, or if it had all been a horrible dream. She could still see the pain in the girl's face, the way all of the joy at her intimidation had disappeared as soon as she'd heard his voice—almost like the very essence of it broke her heart. Then, the sorrow had been replaced by a cold mask, a determination not to feel a thing at the other's presence. Bethany wondered how they knew each other, or had known each other, if they existed at all. Had they been siblings? Friends? Lovers? She didn't know, but she wanted to, and that was enough to start with.

Her parents had gone to a parent teacher conference, and she felt no qualms. There was no chance of them coming home early, no chance of them finding her, calling out to the air like a mad man. She would have plenty of time, she knew, and so she made her procession through the house, starting at the very top, in the attic. There was nothing, and as she went through all of the bedrooms, she was beginning to lose faith that she hadn't imagined the entire incident. It was crazy, after all, insane to believe that she had been tormented by these trapped, tortured souls. There was no such thing, and she began to laugh at herself for ever believing that there was.

Tate was in the Pike girl's bedroom, not because he had any desire to be anywhere near her, not because it had once been his room or because he had died there, but because it had once belonged to Violet. More than that, even, he was there because it was the place where they had made all of their bonds, tied all of the knots that would keep them eternally intertwined. It was strange, in so many ways, to think that, right in the spot where he had been shot down, they had made love for the first time. And, in the place where his blood had spilled across the polished hard wood floors, they had laughed and played cards. He had fallen in love with her there, but he had lost her there too. She had taken the pills in the same spot, fallen on her bed right where that girl slept every night. He had found her there. And she had told him goodbye there, as well. It was an important place for the both of them, yet Tate was beginning to question whether or not it held the same bearings for Violet as it did for him.

This was how Bethany found him: fuming in a corner, rocking back in forth in the rocking chair that they had found down in the basement. It had always been his chair and, to be entirely honest, he was rather angry that she had claimed it for her own. In this new light, it looked less cynical, bright and airy and full of new life. He didn't care for it in the least.

She stopped short in front of him, having found just what she was looking for and suddenly wishing that it would go away, disappear forever. He was a danger, she could feel it in her bones—that fear that Violet had never been able to grasp within herself, the fear that had failed to save her. Rather, it was her bravery that had been her demise. Beth would not be so unfortunate. She stood mouth gaping, unable to say a word. He liked that; she was right to be terrified, and it filled a certain emptiness that he preferred to leave void.

"Looking for someone? Well, here I am. I don't think Violet wants to talk. She'd not in the best mood these days…not to say that I am, but I'm less likely to try and kill myself again, solely for your benefit." He thought, I'd much rather do away with you, but he didn't dare to say it, let alone to follow through with the idea. That was not who he was, not anymore. He couldn't be that monster. He refused, but that didn't mean he couldn't set their new friend straight. "I wouldn't go stirring up angry spirits if I were you. And I especially wouldn't provoke me or Violet. We're not the safest of them all. Ben's alright, and Vivien and Moira. I doubt that Travis would hurt you, and of course the baby, Jeremy…he's harmless. But me, Vi, Hayden…a number of others…we aren't quite as peaceful. It's hard to gauge right and wrong when there are no consequences." But none of that was true. He didn't believe a word he was saying, didn't even believe that he was really dangerous. But it was best to be safe, best not to risk it.

"And don't go in the basement. This room, too…I'll never understand why every teenager picks this room. I did. Violet did. That other boy—what was his name? I don't remember. Regardless, of all the rooms…do you think maybe we draw you all here? Could that be it? I know she likes to watch you all live, but I don't particularly like that you're here. This room holds a lot of memories that I won't be able to revisit now. Well, I won't come when you're awake." He wouldn't come in her sleep, either, but she didn't need to know that. The both of them would steal their reflective moments when everyone was away, when the house was silent and there was no one to see, no one to judge them but the others and themselves. That was the only way to relive the past: in utter desolation, in misery.

"You don't scare me." Beth muttered, though it was clearly a lie. Her hands trembled, fists clenched at her sides. He could practically smell her fear. It was such a familiar scent. He laughed, sending chills down her spine. This was the dark side of Tate, the Tate that Violet had banished all those years ago. But he wasn't letting go, only letting the darkness out to play a bit, to help them. Surely, Violet would not object. She had done it herself, he argued. "What's your name?"

It was such a casual question, in such an unusual situation. "Tate. Tate Langdon. But don't get too attached. I've been dead since '94…and I'm taken." Again, he chuckled to himself. He would always be taken, for the rest of forever, no matter how things were between them. "The girl who scared you was my girlfriend…she's kind of mad at me right now. I don't know. Regardless, I don't want you bothering her. She'd very vulnerable right now, and I don't want her hurting you. Not because I care what happens to you, but because she'll hate herself for it. Eventually." But he was beginning to wonder if she would. She had been so lacking in remorse, her face so devoid of emotion.

Then, Beth did something that he hadn't expected. She stepped closer to him. "Talk to me. I want to know how you died. I want to know I'm not crazy. Tell me who you are, who she is. I'll leave you alone after that, I promise." And her voice was so soft, so persuasive, that he nodded, regretting it the instant that he had.

"Fine." He hissed under his breath, his knees bouncing anxiously. This was not at all what he had planned.

And he began to tell her what she wanted to know, minus a few details that he really did not wish to discuss.

Violet listened for a long time, tucked safely away in the shadows. She wondered if this was how Tate felt most of the time, always hiding from her. She knew that he sometimes watched her, and she even tried to pretend that it bothered her. In truth, it made her heart race in a way that it seldom ever did. Now, however, her heart was pounding out a jagged rhythm—that phantom heart that hadn't truly beat in some seventeen years—but this was not with thrill or excitement. Her cold, dead blood boiled, and she might have identified the feeling as one of jealousy had she experienced it before she died. In that moment, she convinced herself that it was pure fury, rage at the fact that Tate, of all people, was judging her. Yet, she couldn't help the smile that crept over her lips as she watched him, that same unnerving way of twisting his words that had so many times sent other hearts lurching unsteadily. He was playing with her, toying with her insecurities. It was easy to see that he intended no harm. If he had, she would have already been dead, dispatched far before she ever would have had the chance to ask him his name.

But her amusement faded as he began to talk to her, to tell her all of his woes. There were things that she had known about, but that he'd never described in quite the same detail. She tried to tell herself that this was only because she had never really asked him, but there was this growing suspicion that this was not the truth. She had seen that face before, heard that tone of voice. She had fallen for those very same dimples, that charming smile, and she knew. He liked her, and he was quickly winning her over. Violet realized that she shouldn't care, that she shouldn't even be bothering to listen in. She reminded herself that she had been the one to send him away, that he had been the one to do wrong, the one to destroy everything that they had had. He had killed their love, not her. But this only galled her more.

It would be unfair for him to be happy, for him to find someone else when she was forced to wallow in her loneliness. She wanted companionship too, of course, but she could never have it. Because she had a heart, and she couldn't honestly let him go, despite all of her efforts. She held on to him, onto their relationship, and that was all she would ever have. She had died loving Tate, died because she loved Tate. Perhaps that was why she couldn't seem to forget him. Regardless, she couldn't stand the idea of him leaving her, of him finding what she had wanted to have with him with some other girl—someone who was alive. He would kill her too, and what good would that be?

Unconsciously, Violet's hands moved to wipe away the tears that she hadn't realized had been falling for a long time now. They were hot and tender, so different from the tears that she usually cried. These tears were not angry like the others. They were purely sad, despondent. She was beyond being consoled as she crumbled to the closet floor, starting to fade out. Tate was still talking, laughing even, and she remembered when he had laughed with her, when the sounds of their happiness had filled her ears. She missed those days, but she couldn't go back. She could never go back. But above all, she needed to be quiet. As she was about to disappear completely, she broke down and let out one choked sob, one loud mistake that she couldn't take back. He had heard her. They both had.

"What was that?" Btu Tate didn't answer. He only got to his feet and crossed the room, swung open the closet door to find a Violet that was only half there. "Vi, what are you doing?" He knew, but he asked all the same, assuming that she would rather they not discuss it. He didn't want to upset her. As her name fell from his lips, she couldn't help but be called back, only to be trapped in that one moment. "I think we need some time alone, Beth." And his voice was stern again.

She shuffled out of the room, he mind filled with thoughts of the mysterious boy trapped within the confines of the Murder House. She couldn't deny that she thought he was handsome, and a foreign sort of hope rose up inside of her. She wanted him to speak to her again, wanted to see him after that day. But she wondered, would she? She still didn't know who the other ghost was…Violet. She didn't know what his relation to her was, how they were connected, and she wondered. Not that it would matter either way, because she was alive, and how could she be anything to a boy who was dead?

"Leave me alone, Tate!" Violet shrieked, letting her body shake with her cries. There was no point in trying to hide it. He had found her, and it was too late for any discretion.

"Violet? Please, talk to me." He pleaded with her, getting down on his knees beside her and rubbing small circles on her back. He lifted her face to look her in the eyes, staring into the bottomless depth of them. They were beautiful, puffy and swollen as they were, filled with tears that he could only assume he had been the cause of. Was Violet jealous? It seemed so unlikely, but he couldn't help but to hope that she was. "Violet, it's okay. Tell me what's wrong."

"I'm just stupid! I don't want to talk about it." She was so stupid, so silly. She loved him, but she couldn't forget. She wished that she could, but she wanted him to suffer. It was more about the infliction of pain on his part than anything, and, as a result, she brought more heartache on herself. She wished that he had committed one less sin, left on thing undone. She wished, but that would never be. "I just don't…I don't understand."

He held her, there in the closet, of all places, and he pretended that she didn't hate him. He pretended that she was crying because of something else, because of her parent's marriage or some other petty thing that wouldn't make a difference to her life. He pretended that she hadn't died, that he hadn't destroyed her. It was all he had ever wanted for himself, to keep her safe, and he had failed miserably. Violet was trapped with him now, forever enclosed by her own tragedy—by their tragedy—and the guilt killed him with every breath he took. So, naturally, he pretended that none of it had ever happened.

"I love you." he murmured, over and over in her ear. It was the only one thing that was entirely true, unquestionable and undeniable. His idolatry of that girl was all he knew, all that he could see. How could she not grasp that? How could it mean nothing? Did it? "Why won't you forgive me?" The query slipped out when he had least expected, and the stiffening of her spine indicated to him that he should have stopped the words. He's ruined the opportunity again.

"I can't look at you, Tate." replied Violet simply, inhaling slowly, shakily, her forehead pressed against his, her eyes closed tightly.

So, he lifter her eyes to his again and smiled. "You _are_ looking at me, Violet."

She didn't realize she was kissing him until it was too late to stop, until their bodies were already intertwined. His arms wrapped around her small waste naturally, just as they had so many times bore that moment, and he hands came to tangle in his hair. Violet couldn't bring herself to stop, and suddenly the pain didn't matter that much anymore. If she could just have that moment, that little bit of time with him, it wouldn't make a difference what she would have to endure later. Suddenly, she didn't care if he still loved her or not, if he wanted to move on or if he was still willing to stay forever. She didn't care if she could stay with him in return. All she felt was the way they fit together, so perfectly—the sweetest kind of tortured she had ever endured. And torture was a subject that she was well versed in.

When their kiss grew more heated, more needy, she didn't bother to stop him. Instead, she pulled his shirt roughly over his head, setting all of the regret aside for later. Right then, he was all that mattered. Their love was the only thing that was real, the same as always.

When she awoke to find herself lying in bed beside him, though, things looked different. She remembered why she had been crying in the first place, why she had hidden in the closet. She remembered how easy it had been for him to open up to Beth, and how he had taken advantage of her tears. Violet slipped out of the room silently, silently weeping for what she had done, for what she had possessed and what she had lost. She cried because she wanted this to mean something, yet she knew that there was no way that it could. It had just been sex. Violet needed something more than that.

But, for the first time, she thought that, maybe, if he came to her, if he did what she need for him to do…maybe, just maybe, she might be able to let him back inside. She wanted him, in a way that she hadn't let herself want him in years, and it was consuming her like wildfire. So, she made a choice: if Tate came to her, if he sought her out when he came to, she would try her best to rediscover what she had once thrived on.


	4. Fight the Darkness

Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.

Vivien found Violet in the attic, curled up in the corner as she usually was when she was particularly conflicted. She'd had a bad day, her mother could see, or at least one filled with choices and adversity. There was only one thing—one person, rather—in the house that could make her look so gaunt, and that was Tate. She expected the worst, but when she stepped a little closer, she was pleasantly surprised to see a small smirk distorting the features of her daughter's face. She wondered, at first, if it could be some strange new expression of pain, but there was hope there in that smile and it made the woman grin herself.

"What're you doing up here? It's a nice day. You should go out to the gazebo. You're dad's playing poker with Travis. I think he might win." The lighthearted nature of the atmosphere was lost once Violet heard the sound of her mother's voice. It was a reminded of what Tate had done to her, what she had done to her. She had betrayed her mother by loving him, by giving him a second chance. How could she ever do something so horrible? But she felt selfish. She didn't want to stop, because all happiness certainly came at a price and, perhaps, Violet was willing to pay it. She wasn't sure.

"I'm sorry, mom."

Sorry for what? She didn't have the slightest idea. "What is there to be sorry for, honey?"

The tears began to pour down her cheeks which, just a moment earlier, been lifted in a show of satisfaction. Vivien hated to be the cause of such an outburst. Her little girl had so little joy in these days, after her life had ended. She wanted to see her the way she had used to be, before all of the darkness had invaded their lives. She wanted to see her smile and joke and poke fun at the world. Though, she doubted that she would even be given that pleasure. It was too late for all of that, because it had been so horribly destroyed that neither of them believed that it could ever be reassembles. Violet could pretend, and Vivien could push towards the happily ever after that she had dreamed of, but they would never move forward—not a one of them. This was their forever, and it was centered directly in the fiery pits of hell on Earth.

"I scared the new girl…Bethany. I wanted to scare her, just to watch her flip out. It was supposed to be fun." Violet choked over her words, remembering how she had thrilled to the sound of her victim's heartbeat, how she had reveled in every little catch in her shallow breath. "Tate found me. He ended up talking to her. They talked for a long time, about stuff—I don't even know what. I shouldn't have been eavesdropping, but I was and I kind of got caught up in it. They seemed so at ease. It reminded me of us, in a way, but Beth's too goody-two-shoes…either way, they seem to like each other."

Quickly, a picture was being painted in Vivien's mind of just how everything had happened that day, while she had been off with her husband, entirely unsuspecting of what the younger spirits in the house were up to. It was easy to see where the story would lead. She understood. "You got jealous." It was a simple statement, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. Of all people, Violet's mother could understand that—what it felt like to possess someone, to believe that they were completely yours only to discover that they never had been and, perhaps, never would be again.

With a nod, she continued on. "I cried. I didn't want to, but I did, and Tate heard me. He found me. I don't even know how it happened, but before I knew what was happening we were kissing and…"

There was no need for her to finish. "You slept together." Vivien said, simply stating the facts which she knew to be true. There had only ever been two ways for that story to end and, taking into consideration that small remnant of a crooked smile, she was sure that she was right to assume that they had been together. But she also now understood why Violet was crying, why she had said she was sorry. Where her loyalty lied was uncertain—whether it was primarily to herself or to the woman who had given birth to her. If she chose to honor her promise to never forgive the boy that she loved so dearly, she would so Vivien right, but she would suffer. Likewise, it was widely known that, should Violet truly want to be contented in her eternity of torture, she would need Tate by her side. Curling into her daughter's side, Vivien took a deep breath and spoke. "Don't feel guilty. I've already forgiven him, you know. He's just a boy…a very confused boy. Your father feels a little differently, but I understand. He takes it more personally than I do, only because he's never had a lengthy conversation with Nora. If you ever did, you would understand how she convinced him. She'd loud…very compelling. Her soul is the most demanding of any of them, and Tate is weak. He always has been Violet. Time here, in this place, it only made his illnesses worse.

"I don't know if he would have killed all those people anyway. If he'd had a good home, a mother and a father, if he'd been born somewhere else, who knows what would have happened to him. But if you've met Constance you can understand how a strong argument can be made that she ruined him. Either way, what you have to ask yourself is whether or not it matters? Do you love him anyway?" Violet nodded reluctantly, looking ashamed. "If we weren't dead…" and she snickered at this. "I might be a bit concerned that he could harm you, but we are dead and I don't think he could do much damage to you physically. Even without him, you do a pretty good job of it yourself. The options are to put yourself out there and see what happens, or to let it go and wonder. Tate isn't going away, and neither are you. Do you really think you can spend the rest of forever hiding from him, pretending that you don't have feelings for him?"

Violet shrugged, buried her face in her palms and breathed in shakily. She knew she had a point, but she didn't understand it. "How can you not think I'm awful for loving someone who could do all of those things." She could see that she was dark herself, but she sincerely hoped that he mother couldn't. In fact, she prayed that she would never be able to piece together the reasons that she and Tate had always been so harmonious—why they still were. They were so much alike, but that was a hideous truth to accept. He was a coldblooded killer.

But Violet couldn't believe that that could be the truth. She had been inside of his heart, filled it, felt it beat quickly under the palms of her small, frail hands. His soul was beautiful in her eyes, so how could he ever be truly evil. Even if she was, she doubted she would be able to see him as ugly. She felt her mother's hand on her back and stiffened under her touch. "We don't get to choose who we love. We just have to make the best of it.

These words rang true, and Violet only hoped that she would be able to live by them. She wanted Tate to come to her, and long after her mother had left, there she waited for her knight in shiny, black rubber armor—no pun intended, as unfortunate as that was.

Tate awoke in her bed alone to the feel of the sun warm on his back. He felt empty suddenly as his arm sprawled across the space where she had laid, bare in his arms where he had believed her to be safely tucked away. He cursed himself, cursed Beth and all of the reasons why Violet had cried. She'd run out on him again. She hadn't stayed, hadn't waited around or lingered after their time together. What else could that mean but that she regretted it?

Hot, steamy tears stung his eyes as he propped himself up against the headboard. They dripped onto his naked chest, ran over the places where the bullets had left their marks, scalding his heart like fiery branding irons. There was no pain worse than this, worse than being pulled back and then pushed away. He only wanted Violet, but she would never allow him to have her.

He thought about going to look for her, thought about seeking her out. There was still time. He could make her see reason. And so he found himself climbing the stairs to the attic, holding his breath, his dead heart having ceased to beat in those slow moments before he would face either his future or his ultimate demise. But something stopped him from taking the last step. It was a hand, light on his shoulder, pulling him backwards. When he turned to see who it belonged to, he met large, blue eyes, gazing up at him curiously.

"What are you doing?" Beth asked? He shied away from her touch, remembering how Violet had reacted the last time he had interacted with her. Though, in the end, this only spurred him on. He had made her jealous, and some part of his ego was inclined to this. He liked to see the effect he had on her, see the way her face contorted in a sort of animalistic hatred for a girl who really didn't deserve it. She did not interest him in the least, but there was something about the attention that he, quite naturally, enjoyed. Tate was only human after all.

"I need to talk to Violet. We need to talk…" he explained, shaking his head to dispel his memories of what they had done after Bethany had left. He was growing uncomfortable as his mind refused to leave the topic alone.

"You two…you're not right, you know. I don't think she understands what she's missing. There's nothing wrong with you, Tate. You know that, don't you?" But there was so much wrong with him. By this time, Violet was listening in again. It was becoming something of a habit—a habit which she abhorred, but that she couldn't seem to resist the temptation of regardless.

The urge she felt to slowly rip Bethany to pieces was hard to ignore. She despised her, because she could see what Tate couldn't. He knew that she took interest in him, but he did not understand that she was slowly pulling him closer to her, reeling him in. Her words were poisoned, seeing into his ears and corrupting his thoughts. Tate was brilliants in many ways, but relationships were not his forte.

"She wants to change you, Tate. You shouldn't let her do that. Because, if you love someone, you should love them the way that they are…you should forgive them when they make mistakes. Violet wants you, but she'll never forgive you. I had someone do that to me once, and it didn't work out well at all." Violet couldn't see straight, couldn't think straight. Her hands shook with rage and she wondered briefly if this was what Tate felt like before he killed someone. He didn't like to look his victims in the eyes, because he did have some measure of a soul, but he never relented. Was it this sort of blinding fury that spurred him on? It seemed entirely plausible.

"I like you. I like you just the way you are, even dead. I think you're a good guy…and handsome. Danger can be hot too…" Tate watched her blush, watched her bat her eyes, but Violet could hear it. She didn't need eyes to know how Beth would look at him, the way her eyes would smolder. Violet stumbled down the stairs then, fuming with anger. The girl had no idea what she was getting herself into, yet she didn't seem to mind so much.

As Violet stalked forward, feeling the darkest thoughts and desires ebbing through her, she watched as Bethany shrank away, backed up until her back came into contact with the wall, their faces just inches apart. The words on Violet's lips seethed, burned with the threat she felt in her heart. "Who do you think you are? I can hear everything you say. If you want to bad mouth me, do it to my face. But, I promise, you will be sorry…so very sorry." It was as though she could see herself from outside of her body, watch herself pushing her adversary to her limits. Of course, it was all jealousy, all possessive, territorial instincts—not that Violet would ever admit that. Happiness was fragile, and she needed to defend her few opportunities to possess it.

Tate could feel the darkness building inside of her. She was a magnet, just as he was. They were open to the evil powers of the house, and they would easily be used as its tools in causing pain, suffering. It could feed off of that energy, trap it there forever, reinforcing its hold on the victims it retained. But Violet would feel guilty if she did any real damage, so Tate wrapped his arms around her comfortingly, pulling her back gently and whispering the words 'let it go' softly in her ear.

She clutched at his hands, pulling against the restraints, but eventually surrendered. His arms were where she wanted to be, after all. It was where Bethany wanted to be, for reasons that Violet could only half-understand. She had felt the same way, even when she had been alive, but she had been different. This girl only flirted with the danger, then shied away from it when it became too great of a threat. Violet had thrived in it, dwelled in the depth of it.

"You're not worth it." Violet hissed under breath as he lead her up into the attic, pulling her by one of her still-shaking hands.

When they found themselves alone, Tate began to pace and she followed his motions with her eyes. He was worried now, worried for what was happening to the girl that he was loved. She was slowly slipping into the grasp of those forces that had destroyed him, and he couldn't watch any longer. He couldn't let it continue, because he knew the consequences. He had escaped once, but he wasn't sure that he could do it again—no when Violet was pulling him back to that same place. They could never be happy there. That place was designed, engineered, to make them empty.

"Vi, you need to stop. You need to control your violent urges. They're escalading and it's very dangerous. I don't want the darkness to take you away from me, from us—even your mom and dad. They'd miss the old you, Violet. You can't give in to it." He knew he sounded like a hypocrite, but it was the truth, the only way he could think to present it to her.

"What are you talking about?" She asked the question, though she already understood. She could feel herself changing, feel her sanity slowly slipping away into the nothingness. She did not know those parts of her mind, those shabbily lit corners of her soul that were entirely new. They had expanded, and she was afraid of what that would mean. There was an infinite amount of time for them to consume her, but she didn't want them to.

"You're becoming what I became." Tate told her simply, his brow creasing with concern and almost a hint of crazed panic.

So, faced with this new adversity, Violet decided that she would tell the truth—the entire truth and nothing besides. "I need you to keep it away, just like you need me to keep it away. We're lost without each other, I think. Our darkness seems to cancel one another out. That's the only way I know to keep it in check. I want to be together, but I need you to understand that it's hard for me to forget. It's hard for me to forgive you, but I'm trying."

Tate nodded, his eyes growing wet and swelling with tears. He hated that he had done this to them, hated that his very existence had caused her pain. He had wanted to give her everything, but instead he had taken everything away. He had destroyed her life, and, for that, he could not even forgive himself. How she ever could do so baffled him. "I don't expect you to forgive me—I never did—but I want you to. I need you to so badly. I want you to look at me the way you used to. You used to look at me like I was the whole world. Now…you look disappointed." Her eyes killed him with every glare, every sad, questioning glance. He hated the depth behind them, hated the meaning.

"I am disappointed." she conceded, taking his hands in hers and kissing their fingers where they intertwined. "But you're still my whole world. You would be, I think, no matter what you did. And it's hard for me to admit that. You know." He cracked a smile, laughed tensely. She always made him laugh, even under the most dire circumstances. "I want you forever, even if it takes forever for us to put ourselves back the way we were. It's all I have…you're all I'll ever have. But you're all I'll ever want, too. It may be inconvenient, but you don't get to choose who you fall in love with."

She smiled at him exuberantly, and he pulled her lips to meet his. This was not the sort of reconciliation that she would have imagined, but it was good enough for her—better, in fact. This was what she had dreamt of all along, every night since she'd sent him away. When she would fade out into the empty voids, she would see that moment, and it would always make her cry. Now, it only made her smile wider.

Violet was home, safely tucked away in the darkness that was her only light.


	5. Outburst

Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.

It seemed so natural to Tate, more so than to Violet. There was little for him to forgive aside from her abandonment. He felt no uneasiness in moving towards her, in caressing her and telling her how much he loved her. He was not bothered when there was a silence between them, or when they would lay together at night in the attic, looking out the window at the moon and the stars—only on nights when the clouds and the green-leafed trees did not obstruct the view. Winter was best for this, and so he grew to love the season. Most of all, Tate never thought twice about right or wrong, if they should be together or if they shouldn't. He never thought about the complications behind it all, the fact that Ben still had no idea that they even spoke. Vivien made very sure of this secrecy, constantly whisking her husband away with distractions and tactfully assembled lures.

Violet, on the other hand, thought of this quite often. She didn't like lying, somewhere deep down inside of herself, yet she got a thrill from it. And Lord knew she was quite skillfully versed in the art of it. There was no hesitation in her voice when Ben asked her how she was and she grumbled when he would ask her if Tate had at all bothered her and she would slander her lover mercilessly. It was easy, because all of those things were still very much present within her. She did hate him, but she loved him too much to allow that to come between what they had. She couldn't live without it. Tate had become an addiction of hers—a worse habit than any of her others, including and far surpassing her cigarettes—long before she had ever been able to realize just how deadly he was. She had not known then, in those simpler, more mysterious days when a heart had still beat in her chest, when she'd still had a chest cavity in which to hold the organ; she had not seen the truth, that Tate was the worst type of drug.

Now, they lay in Beth's bed together. She had long ago primarily given up on her pursuit of Tate, after Violet had threatened her. Sometimes, she wondered if the silly girl wasn't just biding her time, waiting for a vulnerable moment, a time when she could slip in through the backdoor. She had told them months before that they couldn't come in her room anymore, though Violet had been eager to inform Bethany that it would never truly be hers at all. It had been Tate's, and he had never left. And it had supposedly been Violet's as well, though how could it ever have been? She hadn't left either. No one could lay claim to the murder house. It belonged to hell, to the spirits that would forever roam the halls, and each new occupant would hold a slightly smaller piece of its history than the last. Because it would always and forever primarily belong to Nora and Charles and their mutilated child. Even the doomed teenage lovers were only fixtures, unfortunate additions to the home's gruesome collection of spirits. Violet liked to remind the new occupants of this in whatever way she could. She would move things, bump thing, knock things over, leave drawings of herself on Bethany's desk. Mrs. Pike had once complemented her daughter on them, stating that she hadn't known Beth was such a gifted artist. Of course, she wasn't, not at all—that was all Violet, not that they would ever know.

Vivien often asked her what the point was, and she had insisted that it was only to frighten her competition. And, in part, it was. But there was also the underlying truth that she wanted to be recognized, to be seen. Even the smallest parts of what she had once been set adrift in the world made her feel a part of it, made her feel alive. She was not so empty then, because someone, something in the living realm, would have a piece of her. Was that really so harmful? Was it so much to ask? Too much to be desired from within the grips of tragic death?

Tate ran a hand through Violet's hair and she tried to forget all of these thoughts, tried to only focus on the moment, the way his skin felt against hers, the warmth of his body against her. She loved him, she knew. There had never been any denying that. She simply couldn't. But the angry voices inside her head were so hard to keep quiet. They hummed like a buzz saw behind her ears, thrumming like the chorus of a thousand bees—just mindless humming, whispers and temptations. She wished they would go away, but they wouldn't. It was the house; it had to be, but she wouldn't tell a single soul, not even Tate. Instead, she turned to face him, brushing her lips against his in an effort to dispel her violent musings.

"I love you," he murmured, his breath washing over her as he cupped her face and pulled her closer, if that was even possible. In just a few moments, they were so hopelessly entangled that both one could tell where one started and the other began, at which point arms became chests and torsos, leading down to grow out into legs and bare feet, bare hearts thrumming in perfect harmony. They had become one person, and it suited them well. As their clothes began to fall away, Violet lost herself, as did Tate. There would be no stopping, no turning back, not ever.

They didn't hear the footfalls on the steps, the sound of someone making their way languidly down the hallway. Any other time, Violet might have recognized the pattern, but she was too preoccupied. There was nothing but his body and hers. There was no knock at the door, no sound of it creaking open, no gasp. There was nothing but harsh breathing, nothing but the two of them, the two eternal lovers. That is, not until the moment Violet felt herself being roughly yanked out of bed by the shoulders, felt the harsh, unforgiving hands shoving her furiously to the corner of the room. Now, she heard him scream, watched him descend on his pray like a practiced predator—it was Ben.

"What is this? What is going on here?" He shouted, lunging at Tate where he had stood to redress. His fist flew in the general direction of a nose, but, luckily, Tate quickly dodged it.

True to form, he began to try and talk his way out of trouble. "I understand that you're angry, Dr. Harmon. But you have to understand that I have changed. I love Vi—"

"You have not changed! Nobody changes, Tate!"

The thunderous argument grew and grew. Violet knew that the peace would not last long and, by the time Vivien had rushed to her side, it had come to blows. She watched as her father landed un-deflected hits that she was sure Tate could have easily combatted. He wouldn't fight back, though. He had resolved to take what was coming to him, because that was what Ben had told him to do at the very beginning. It was what Violet had said he must do, that night that she sent him away—the night he died for the second time. They had insisted that he needed to pay for what he had done, that he needed to take responsibility for his sins, and with every blow he was freer. The pain was nothing—hardly noticeable compared to the torture which he had endured inwardly, when he'd lost her. He would take it readily, take it and be grateful. This was justified, and he needed it just as badly as he needed for Violet to love him.

"Stop!" she screamed, struggling against her mother's grip. There was little desperation in her voice, only fury. She could feel those voices building, growing louder and louder. The longer she stayed and watched, the more susceptible she was to them, the more she wanted to listen. They told her terrible things, awful things, showed her mental images which, horrifyingly, she delighted in. They were so close, inside of her now, in every part of her. She could feel them coursing with power beneath her celestial skin and she adored the sensation. She felt as though she were something to be feared, something dangerous, and it pleased her. There was an unexpected smile that graced her lips as she finally broke away from her mother's grasp, though it fell quickly into one of anguish as she listened to the sound of Tate's neck snapping in two.

Now, her words seethed, the octaves dropping to match that of the low, bass humming through her mind. "I said…STOP."

Fear flashed across Ben's face as his eyes lifted to meet hers. She was not the little girl he had raised. She was something far more sinister than that. Her brown eyes now held that same threat—the same threat that Tate's black irises portrayed to those who he wished to harm. Violet was deadly, or even worse, she had become sick and twisted, just like the boy she loved. Vivien moved to stand in front of her daughter, working to dispel the intensity of the moment, to remove the volatility from the equation. Ben had made a gigantic mistake, and they all knew it. "Honey, it's okay. I won't let him do that again." But the idea of Vivien protecting Violet and Tate was laughable. In fact, Violet did laugh.

"It's fine, mom. He won't get the chance." It was clear what she meant by this. In her life, she had been weak, but in this afterlife she had grown stronger. She was just a spirit now, and he spirit had always been unbreakable. Whether it had truly been violent was arguable, and none of them would ever quite be sure. "I think you should leave now."

After a few strange exchanges of glances, Vivien and Ben slipped away, leaving the two of them alone. Tate was bloodied and broken and, though she knew that he would heal, it made her angry beyond words. As Violet struggled to lift him to the bed, she thought of how he must feel, what he must have been thinking—to have let her father injure him so badly. Had it been some sort of sick self-punishment? Masochistic? Yes, she knew it had. He carried his guilt poorly; it was a heavy burden that bore him down and, perhaps, in this way, he had unloaded some of it. She knew that he would insist it was alright, that he had known all along that it was unavoidable. The worst part was that he was right.

"Wake up, Tate." She whispered, curling beside him on the bed as she watched the blood evaporate, as though it had never been there at all—just the same as he blood had disappeared whenever she had cut, when she had slit her own throat for the Pike girl. The dreamlike quality of this, however, was quickly lost on her, far too familiar to hold her interest for long. Instead, she watched the way his neck straightened, smoothed back out into a gentle slope, down his back until it was perfect, as though there had never been any injury at all. When he opened his eyes, she smiled. "You sure do know how to take a beating. You're threshold for pain is impressive."

He smirked, though he felt awful, a little sore, and replied, "I try. What kind of man would I be, anyway, if I couldn't at least be good at dying? Besides, what's a broken neck between friends?" This made her chuckle, then grimace at his use of the word friends. "Not exactly friends…let's say he's my father-in-law and leave it at that." Only, he wasn't, not anywhere close.

"We're not married, Tate."

"Well, if we were alive, we would have been. We'd have been old by now…" And he grinned at her playfully. "Things would be very different. So why not just pretend like we grew up? Like we actually have a life together. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Violet thought about this, pondered the idea—what it would be like to be married, to have a house and children. She had never truly thought that she would ever want any of those things or be able to have them, even when she had still been alive. But it made her sad to think that she and Tate would never be more than what they were in the moment, never be more the just the two of them: illegitimate teenagers in love. It seemed so casual, too casual for two people spending eternity with one another.

"Why don't we get married, Violet?" Tate questioned, looking at her with underlying excitement and a profound curiosity, as though this were the most natural thing in the world for two ghosts to do. In fact, it seemed absurd that they hadn't been married.

Violet broke into hysterics, and then felt guilty as his face quickly fell into an expression of disappointment and hurt. "Thanks." He huffed, averting her gaze.

"I'm sorry, Tate. It's just that I never really thought about that, not after I died. I thought that that ship had sailed. Every time I look in the mirror I see a fifteen year old girl, and even though I know I'm much older, I don't feel it. I still see myself for what I was, not what I would have been. It's just weird." She explained quickly, trying desperately to salvage the situation. He smiled that same smile of his that always broke her heart, and she knew that she was done for. Whatever he had in mind, she would consent.

"Then let's do it. Let's pretend we ran away to Kentucky or something and got married." Violet guffawed once, and then nodded her approval. It was all very silly, yet she could feel the butterflies rattling in her stomach that wasn't really there. "Okay. I'll start the vows." And there was a long pause as he gathered his thoughts. When he finally spoke, his eyes were sincere, slightly blurred by tears brought on by what he felt for her, his amazement at the impossibility of this moment. But Tate had always cried at weddings. "I, Tate Langdon, hereby take you, Violet Harmon, to be my wife. I promise that I will spend every day of forever loving you, that I will never leave your side, never betray you, never again hurt you. I will love honor and cherish you, in death, for the rest of eternity.

"Now, Miss Harmon, repeat after me. I, Violet Harmon…hereby take Tate Langdon…as my husband…" As she said the words, she smiled widely, their meaning sinking in. "I promise to love him…for always…and to forgive him, even when he is a horrible monster…" This, she found funny in an odd way, though a week earlier it would have offended her. "I promise to stand by him…in death…for the rest of eternity." After she said these last words, there was silence.

"What now?" Violet asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

"I don't have a ring."

But Violet had an idea. On Beth's nightstand she had seen a pair of black, heart-shaped earrings which she quickly retrieved, along with the razor blades that she had long ago stashed away under the floorboards, along with her cd's. Without a word, Violet cut open the top of her hand, and the top of Tate's, breaking the hook from off of the pieces of jewelry and deeply embedding the other halves in their injured flesh. These mutilations healed just as quickly as any others, though, this time, there was a scar left behind: a darkened raise in the shape of a heart.

Tate muttered. "You always did hate normal things."

And the truth was, yes, she always had.

"I know it isn't easy." Tate added, his face suddenly sad. "I know that they're getting to you…the voices, I mean. They're hard to ignore. I could kind of hear you scream, just as I faded out. You totally lost it. But I want you to know that I don't care what you do. I love you anyway, even if you murder everyone a million times. I'll forgive you, Violet, even if you didn't forgive me. I just thought you should know that."

And she suddenly felt awful for all that she had put him through, for all of the betrayal and hurt and anger and resentment. It had been futile all along. She had always been on her way back to him, because she had always known that there would never be anyone else in the world that could make her feel the way that he did. Tate was it for her, all that she would ever have, all that she would ever want. It was silly and stupid, but it was the truth. How could she have ever hated him at all? "I'm sorry. I never stopped caring about you, you know. I just needed time. I want to forget all that, alright? I want to leave it in the past. That was a part of a different world, a world that I don't belong to anymore. I'm dead, so what do I care if you were a monster? What do I care if I am? I don't want to hurt anyone, but I'm not going to feel guilty for being happy. _You_ make me happy, Tate."

He understood what she was saying, what she was trying to tell him. It was an assurance, a promise that what had happened between him and her father didn't matter. She wouldn't leave him, not for that reason anyway, not because somebody else told her to. She loved him, and she deserved to be happy. And that was more than enough to satisfy him.


	6. Murder House Forever

Author's Note: Sorry that it took me so long to update. My internet hasn't been working so I wasn't able to get online and post. I know this story had been kind of short, but it's really just as glimpse of the afterlife for Violet and Tate. I think it's pretty realistic. Also, I wanted to wrap this up before I started writing my fic for the exchange. Thanks again for all of the reviews! Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.

The day that Bethany had her sixteenth birthday was the day that Violet finally lost her fragile grip on her own self-control. She'd been waiting for her own sweet sixteen for nearly two decades, but it wouldn't ever come. She was forever fifteen, and to watch the people around her—particularly those she didn't care much for—age and move on was impossibly difficult to watch. It wasn't fair, but Violet knew the awful truth, the truth that negated all of this thought: life was not fair, and neither was death. In fact, it was all incredibly unfair, and nothing could ever be justified or avenged. The children Tate had killed all those years ago should not have died, yet they did, and they were confined within the hellish prison that he had built for them for the rest of eternity, never changing or moving on, just the same as their killer, just the same as her.

Violet watched as Beth applied her makeup, coloring her plump lips with bright pink lipstick. The skirt she wore, in Violet's opinion, was too short, but she had never known anything about what was sexy. She was not sexy, not in the least. She was just Violet Harmon, and it never surprised her that she was not sought after by the opposite gender. Tate had been the first boy to ever take interest in her, and she was certain that he would be the last. When she had been alive—when she had believed she was alive—she had hoped that her looks would improve with age. Now, nothing would improve, not even her understanding of life. She had stopped moving, stopped breathing. She'd stopped. Everything.

Without being heard, Violet seethed, groaned and hissed. The notion that this was what she envied made her sick, made her murderous with rage. She had never wanted this life, yet it was just the life that she now looked on with irrational yearning. Hadn't she always instead that it was petty? That none of those things that Bethany had mattered? Hadn't she always loved herself the way she was, or pretended to at the very least. Violet had chosen her fate, so why did she feel so cheated.

"I know you're here, Violet." Bethany hummed to herself, running her fingers through her hair, and Violet appeared. There was no use in hiding. They both knew what was happening. The tension in the air was practically tangible. "What's the matter? Jealous?" Violet didn't say anything, only fumed at her through the reflection of her bureau mirror. It was white, with little pink flowers, and she hated it almost as much as she hated its owner. Neither one of them was anything like her. On the contrary, they represented everything that she wasn't, never had been, everything that she opposed and despised in the world. "I don't see why. You have Tate. But you abuse him too, don't you? Aren't you ever happy, Violet? I guess not. That's why you killed yourself, isn't it? Am I right? That's why you downed all those pills."

For a moment, she wondered if this had been one of the things that Tate had discussed with her. She tried to think, tried to remember what she had heard from the confines of the bedroom closet, but she had been too flustered. She couldn't recall a thing about the words he had spoken. All that Violet could remember was the blinding rage, the hurt, the way his body had leaned into hers as though pulled to it, the way people moved together naturally in intimate situations. It was easy to see where the night had been headed before she had showed herself, and Violet briefly wondered what things would be like then if she had been able to keep a hold of her emotions, if she had just faded out silently as she had wanted to do. This was not the time to contemplate this, however. These thoughts were dangerous and she had tried shamefully to avoid them. Anger boiled in the pit of her stomach as she thought of all the things she would have liked to have done in that moment, as she had watched Tate and Beth from the shadows that night.

"Did he tell you that? Did he tell you how I died?"

Bethany smiled, stood. Violet was surprised to note that this girl was a few inches taller than her, with long, exposed legs that she hated to admit were nearly flawless. "He tells me everything, sweetheart. He told me that you're happy now. I don't see it. At least, I don't think it'll last long. You're too unstable Violet. You died with a lot of conflict, and I don't think you'll ever get better. Do you even love him? Or do you just use him for what you want?"

The idea was so outrageous. Violet could hardly bring herself to form the words she wanted, needed, to get out in the open. "I hate you." The sentence hung in the air, mixed with tears that Violet hadn't realized were there. The voices had begun again, the voices that Violet had long ago decided belonged to the house and not to her at all. They were invaders, corrupting her mind, but she wanted to obey them. "You don't understand what love is, Pike. I died because I loved him. I'm here, _forever_, because I love him!" Her voice had risen to a shriek now as the tears poured down her cheeks. She had begun to sob, harder than she ever had. There was too much conflict and she was quickly losing her grasp on what little self-control she had managed to maintain. If Bethany knew what was good for her, she would leave before things went too far.

But the Murder House had other plans, and it would not let her go. Violet had given in to it now, and it would keep its hold on her until it had accomplished what it needed to. Beth was only too naïve to understand the threat, the real danger which hung in the air around her. She was nothing but a bully, and she didn't understand how easy it was to die in that place, how naturally it came. She would never see her seventeenth birthday.

"You don't know anything." And it was all over faster than she had ever imagined it could be.

As Violet pried her hands from where they rested around her victim's throat, the darkness receded, and she saw what she had done. Beth's body had gone cold, lifeless. She had held on longer than necessary, still filled with all of her righteous anger. But, as she beheld her handiwork, the sin that was now her cross, she was horrified.

Tate was by her side not long after, having heard her cries from wherever he had been. Instantly, seeing what had unfolded in his absence, he felt the guilt that he had so feared. He should have been able to stop her, but it would have been pointless. This was what Violet had been headed towards all along, and Tate had always known that he wouldn't be able to stop her. The house had gotten its way, consumed another soul that never had the smallest chance to triumph over it.

"What did I do?" Violet screamed, falling into his body, her knees gone limp. "What have I done? I don't remember…but I do…I don't…" Her hysteric didn't stop as he pulled her over to the bed, wrapped her in her arms as she shook violently with the impact of what she had done. Over and over again, she watched the life drain from Bethany's eyes, remembered the way she had felt oddly powerful standing over her. The shame was too much. She wanted to die, but it was too late. She already had, and that was the worst part of the whole thing. She would never be able to escape the truth of what she had done, because Bethany would be a part of her for the rest of eternity. They would wither away together, as souls trapped in the same hell. Perhaps, one day, Beth would be able to understand.

Tate hushed her as people began to bang on the door. He helped her to fade out when Mr. and Mrs. Pike finally broke into the room. It reminded him of all the scenario's he'd made up in his mind when Violet had died, in those hours after her expiration when he had contemplated what to do with her body. He'd dragged it to the crawl space. He's assumed that Violet would remember, but she hadn't. It had made everything so much easier. He'd wanted to let her believe that she was alive, because he'd always wanted her to be happy. It was all he had ever wanted, and he'd destroyed that.

Now, however, he was all she had. He kissed her lips, pulled her lovingly off the bed and out of the bedroom, up to the attic. They watched as the ambulances pulled up, along with the police cars. Violet would never be taken away, but the threat was there in their hearts all the same. She was a killer, just like him, but she would never have to face the consequences.

"I didn't want this for you, Violet." Tate hummed, looking deep into her eyes, tears pooling in his own. "I wanted you to live. I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to live in the world because it's a better place with you in it. I never wanted you to die…I didn't want this place to have you. I didn't want you to have to live with this guilt because I knew it would kill you all over again. I love you, Vi. I love you so much." It was his turn to be hysterical, his turn to be comforted. She took his face in her hands, tried futilely to kiss away his tears, but there were too many of them. They fell in a deluge down his face, breaking her heart with each salty drop. "I'm sorry…I'm sorry."

He would have kept saying it if her lips had not captured his, more passionately that he could have expected. When she pulled away, she was crying too. "It's not your fault, Tate. I did this. I killed myself and I killed her too. That is not your fault."

Their love making that night was comforting, passionate. They needed it, not just wanted. That night, they served each other as lovers, and she had never felt more broken or more complete. They were both horrible monsters, and they would pay for their sins with every hellish day that passed, every moment of their eternity. But they could escape into one another and, as monsters do, they would ignore the truth. They would not feel the impact they had. At least, they would try their hardest not to. This was what reality was, but it was also their fantasy. Tate and Violet could not judge anyone, and this took away the pain between them. Because she now saw what it was like to be encompassed by the darkness. It was a frightening power, but she understood. She forgave him, as her mother had been able to even though she never had. This was a new beginning, taken from another soul's end.

Another spirit joined the company of the Murder House, but she would not be the last. Death was natural in that place, inevitable. Tate and Violet had found a violet peace in this fact, and the others would learn to do the same. When you have forever to pay for your life, the value of it pales. There is no loss, only torture for what you truly are. Ben, Vivien, Tate, Violet…they all felt this, just as the others did, the ones who had been there so much longer than they had. And Bethany would understand one day, just the same.

Love had killed them all. Passion had been there demise. Now, they all lived off of fear—fear and death.

The End.


End file.
